THE CASE FOR THE 1619 PROJECT: CASE STUDIES/PERSONAL EXPERIENCES

The Mis-Education of Everybody

How rejection of racial equality in Florida schools fails us all

In the state of Florida, you’re likely to witness the possibilities of one day becoming a Governor, like Ron DeSantis, or a legendary baseball player, like Dwight Gooden. There’s the possibility of becoming a dancer like the great Fernando Bujones or a singer, like Butterfly McQueen. Or a scientist, maybe even an astronaut, like Norman Thagard. There’s also the chance of becoming an educator, like James Weldon Johnson, or a writer, like Zora Neale Hurston.

The potential to become your biggest aspiration in a state like Florida is sky-scraping. And when I look at my 29 nieces and nephews, I see the prospects of these aspirations living in their bodies.

However, a child left to discover their own aspirations becomes a hope deferred. If a child is only left with the achievement of others, or if they’re only left to absorb their own lineage of achievements, the child may not discover their depth or arrive to understand the historical depth of others until much later in life.

Or never.

On June 10, 2021, The Florida State Board of Education approved a new rule banning Critical Race Theory and material from the controversial “1619 Project” in Florida classrooms. The subject of the 1619 Project and Critical Race Theory has been widespread amongst educators, politicians, and progressives over the last year, as America experienced a racial reckoning following the unjust police killing of George Floyd. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis stated:

“The state must have an education system that is “preferring fact over narrative.” This must mean keeping ‘outrageous’ approaches such as ‘Critical Race Theory’ and ‘The 1619 Project’ out of schools.”

Although President Lincoln is widely believed to have officially abolished slavery with the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, the declaration had little to no effect in Florida. Enslavement in Florida did not end on one specific day but rather collapsed after the end of the Civil war and the fall of the Confederacy. As a result, there were no slave owners or other forms of authority to continue the execution of chattel slavery. Florida’s history contends that chattel slavery began in the early 1500s. In Florida, emancipation was declared in May 1865, however, slavery did not officially end until the Thirteenth Amendment in December 1865.

Florida’s earliest reported presence of slaves began in April 1528 with Estevanico; — the first African slave to be brought to the region we now know as St. Augustine, Florida. Estevanico, also referred to as “the Black” or Esteban de Dorantes was sold into slavery in 1522 to Andres Dorantes de Carranza. Estevanico now in possession of Carranza, traveled to Florida to participate in the North America expedition to colonize Florida and the Gulf Coast, led by Pánfilo de Narváez; — the newly appointed governor of La Florida (Spanish Florida). Though the expedition and Estevanico’s presence eventually ended in Mexico, Florida would prove to be a major marking in the earliest accounts of slavery.

The 1619 Project is an extended journalism project developed by investigative journalist, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and writers from the New York Times Magazine, aiming to: “reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of the United States national narrative.” The project was first launched in August 2019 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of enslaved African’s first arrival in Virginia.

The 1619 Project re-examines the legacy and history of slavery in the United States while encompassing a curriculum developed for utilization in schools. The project also employed historians and assistance from the Smithsonian for research, fact-checking, and development purposes. The 1619 project has widely sparked debate, criticism, and controversy from historians and political critics. Although critics have expressed strong reservations and demanded factual corrections, Jake Silverstein, the editor of The New York Magazine, stands by the accuracy of the project and declined to make any corrections.

However, the major criticism coming from the Sunshine State is that the 1619 Project ignores earlier accounts of slaves’ presence in Florida. In her article, Historian Susan Parker confirms she contacted the 1619 Project in regards to Florida’s forgotten slave history:

“They were and are well aware of the earlier presence in La Florida but replied that they chose to focus on Virginia and thus with that qualifier, the claim about the first black slaves was correct.”

On June 2, 2021, (eight days before the Florida 1619/CRT ban) the Duval County School Board voted 5–2 to change the names of six Jacksonville, Florida public schools named after the Confederate leaders: Robert E. Lee High, Joseph Finegan Elementary, Stonewall Jackson Elementary, Kirby Smith Middle, J.E.B. Stuart Middle, and Jefferson Davis Middle. The names approved to change went into effect on August 3rd, 2021. School Board Chairwoman Elizabeth Andersen said in a statement:

“As a board and a community, we’ve done really hard things. But we can get this done. We know who we want to be as a school district.”

Ben Fraizer, Founder of the National Coalition also stated:

“The School Board’s decision to rename six schools in Jacksonville is a giant step forward in righting a racist ideology. We don’t need schools named in honor of slave-holding Generals. That our children had to go to schools that were named to honor a disgraceful past was an injustice. The School Board’s vote tonight rejects those ideas and is a victory for Jacksonville.”

While the city embraced the name change as a turning point, I could not clap for this. As with the Juneteenth national federal holiday and every other symbolic change, it’s all long, overdue crumbs.

The swift vote to symbolize the acknowledgment of race vs the swift vote to dismantle the confrontational acknowledgment of race tells me everything I need to know about education in America.

We can promote this form of change on the outside of our schools, but never can we allow it to permeate on the inside.

Jamelle Bouie’s essay of the project, “What the Reactionary Politics of 2019 Owe to the Politics of Slavery,” drives pro-slavery politics to the forefront of the reckoning. Bouie expands on the larger implications of slaveholder ideology and how it influenced and produced new forms of enslavement in America. Bouie argues that America still harbors the assumption that certain people naturally deserve more power than others.

I contemplated over the miseducated African-Americans of my generation and those who came before, and the many still to come. I deeply considered the years it took to get to who I really am. It all re-traumatized me to the core.

And then it all began to make sense.

The political war over our children’s education is disturbing in itself. The education that insists a child should be merely informed and nothing else is miseducation in every way. Education, at the very least, should aspire to a greater possibility and humanity of our current social standing, so that the world is only left to face a reckoning with our greatness, instead of the latter.

However, we have merely recycled the relay of information. And this historical depth of education — our history of education — is a newly produced form of oppression. All the races, backgrounds, and historical depths, the aspirations of those mentioned above, the producers of oppression, and I share one common fact: we are all products of a broken education system. And no one’s alleged superiority makes them more educated when your only aspiration is to continue oppression.

The reality that pro-slavery politics continued to produce new ways to oppress and miseducate tells me even more about the producers. It says that while the broken education system is, unfortunately, working how it was designed, it has also left the producers highly miseducated, too. Perhaps even more than any other race.

Because if your only method of preservation, protection, and aspiration in education is to continue the legacy of oppression, you are more broken than the system you created.

When you don’t understand the urgency in Black Lives Matter, when you don’t understand why #StopAsianHate is hash-tagged all over the world, when you don’t understand the most basic things about life for any other race, you are more in need of humanity than ever. And it is the current producers of oppression who perhaps need to know the most about everybody because they are running the country on a broken education too, one in which they were taught so little about anybody other than themselves.

The 1619 project, while valuable and beneficial, is not comprehensive. While I was discouraged to learn of Florida’s slave presence left out of the project, I deeply respect what it does give, which is a foundation of historical depth never before executed in this capacity.

While restricted, the 1619 project provides a foundation of education that can hopefully aspire to a possibility greater than we’ve ever known; — a possibility that says we will be able to get to who we are more swiftly or even before it’s too late. I hope that one day Florida’s slave history will possibly be captured in a way that cultivates a new progression, rather than oppression; so that we have a more comprehensive collective to reckon with.

In collaboration with the 1619 project, it is incumbent for us to unravel and explain the impact of race inequality, as its effects still indwell within us. It is not just a part of some of us but resides in all of us. The current education system is continuing to break us all over the world. And we all consciously and subconsciously continue to play a role.

While I have come to understand the broken education like never before, the current producers of these oppressive forces will not own the ugly in this. What they want us to accept — more adamantly than ever — is that racial inequality is a thing of the past and that we should not teach our children to see color.

I say we’re over 400 years too late.

As a state with one of the earliest accounts of slave presence, Florida perhaps needs more reckoning than what the 1619 Project is asking. Whether my nieces and nephews will approach me about race or whether the moment will arise for me to initiate that first conversation, it will be just as urgent and vital, and I know either way the day is destined to come.

What’s devastating is that the very thing I am sure of regarding their bodies is that at some point in their life, they will all have to reckon with racism. It is the one thing I can assure them of, and yet the one thing I can’t protect them from. At the very least, it is my responsibility as their aunt to help them in some way to understand the truth about their race.

What I do know is that I will never encourage them to not see color. They will very well see and know its contents. I will never think that they are too young to understand racism when it is very likely they will experience it at any moment.

It is unfortunate that the one thing that connects us all, has broken us all, and that is miseducation. It cannot be the Floridian nor American way. If we do not dismantle the cords (or rather the discord) of the broken education system, it will ultimately fail our children with a reckoning to which America will never recover.

Works Cited:

Amon, A. (2019, July 5). African Muslims in Early America. National Museum of African American History and Culture. https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/collection/african-muslims-early-america.

Ashley, J. M., & Lincoln, A. (n.d.). The 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. National Constitution Center — The 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendment/amendment-xiii#:~:text=Neither%20slavery%20nor%20involuntary%20servitude,place%20subject%20to%20their%20jurisdiction.

Bernstein, B. (2021, June 10). Florida board of education APPROVES rule Banning ‘1619 Project’ from classrooms. Yahoo! News. https://news.yahoo.com/florida-board-education-approves-rule-165718175.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall.

Bloch, E. (2021, June 3). Duval School Board votes to rename 6 Confederate-tied schools, including Lee. The Florida Times-Union. https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/education/2021/06/01/duval-school-board-votes-to-change-6-confederate-tied-schools-including-lee/7493301002/.

Bouie, J. (2019, August 14). What the Reactionary Politics of 2019 Owe to the Politics of Slavery. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/republicans-racism-african-americans.html.

Chipman, D. (n.d.). Estevanico (unknown–1539). TSHA. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/estevanico.

Dorantes, C. de V. (1539). Estevanico. Biography. https://biography.yourdictionary.com/estevanico.

Encyclopedia.com. (1999, July 13). .” Colonial America Reference Library. . Encyclopedia.com. 17 Jun. 2021. Encyclopedia.com. https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/estevanico-0.

Herrick, D. F. (2018). Esteban the African slave who explored America. University of New Mexico Press.

Jones, N. H. (2019, August 14). The 1619 Project. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619-america-slavery.html.

Kaufman, E. (2019, December 16). Opinion | The ‘1619 Project’ Gets Schooled. The Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-1619-project-gets-schooled-11576540494.

Lincoln, A. (n.d.). The Emancipation Proclamation. National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation.

MacDougald, J. E. (2018). The Pánfilo de Narváez expedition of 1528: highlights of the expedition and determination of the landing place. Marsden House.

Museum Of Florida History. (n.d.). The War Ends: Surrender, Occupation, and Emancipation. Museum of Florida History. https://www.museumoffloridahistory.com/exhibits/permanent-exhibits/florida-in-the-civil-war/the-war-ends-surrender-occupation-and-emancipation/.

Neason, A. (2019, August 15). The 1619 Project and the stories we tell about slavery. Columbia Journalism Review. https://www.cjr.org/analysis/the-1619-project-nytimes.php.

Parker, S. (2019, August 25). ‘1619 project’ ignores fact that slaves were present in florida decades before. The St. Augustine Record. https://www.staugustine.com/news/20190824/1619-project-ignores-fact-that-slaves-were-present-in-florida-decades-before.

Serwer, A. (2020, January 21). The Fight Over the 1619 Project Is Not About the Facts. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/12/historians-clash-1619-project/604093/.

Silverstein, J. (2020). Twelve scholars critique the 1619 project and the New York Times magazine Editor Responds. History News Network. https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/174140.

University of California, Irvine. (n.d.). History of ESTEVANICO. History of Estevanico — The Estevanico Society. https://www.humanities.uci.edu/mclark/HumCore2001/Spring%20Quarter/Estevanico.htm.

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